Is It Wrong to End Sentences With Prepositions?

Prepositions are one of the traditional parts of speech. Prepositions are members of a closed word class – which means that few new prepositions ever enter the language. In fact, there are only about 100 of them in English.

1. What do prepositions do?
Prepositions are words (such as in and out, above and below, to and from) that show the relationship between other words and phrases in a sentence. Prepositions often show location (“under the table”), direction (“to the south”), or time (“past midnight”).

2. Are all prepositions single words?
No. In addition to the simple (one-word) prepositions, several word groups (such as “in addition to” and “such as”) perform the same grammatical function. These word groups are called complex prepositions.

3. Is it wrong to end a sentence with a preposition                                                                                     Examples of such a sentence are: Who were you talking to? He wondered were she had come from. And there has been much debate about the appropriateness of such grammar. Such ones will prefer that the above sentences be rephrased into: To whom was she speaking? He wondered from where she had come.                              

But according to a note on grammar, this much was said:

Quite simply, No! A preposition is not a bad word to end a sentence with.

Editor Bryan Garner wasn’t the first to call that “rule” a “superstition”:

The rule about not ending sentences with prepositions is a remnant of Latin grammar, in which a preposition was the one word that a writer could not end a sentence with. But Latin grammar should not restrain English grammar.

If the superstition is a “rule” at all, it is a rule of persuasive speaking and not of grammar, the idea being to end sentences with strong words that drive a point home. That principle is sound, of course, but not to the extent of meriting close adherence or flouting established idiom.
(Garner’s Modern American Usage. Oxford University Press, 2009)

And the Oxford Dictionaries completes the argument with:

To sum up, the deferring of prepositions sounds perfectly natural and is part of standard English. Once you start moving the prepositions to their supposed ‘correct’ positions, you find yourself with very stilted or even impossible sentences.

Well-established and famous writers over the years, such as George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Julian Barnes, have been blithely stranding their prepositions to no ill effect (that is including them at the end of sentences): please feel free to go and end a sentence with a preposition!

Hope that makes you sleep better at night, and less anxious about whether you have broken a cardinal rule of grammar.